a wordy introduction

2013 Hop Harvest spoils!

WELL HELLO, internet.  I have been trying to make this post for about a month now - created the blog, fussed with the layout, did a thousand and two things that afterward I thought, "this would make a great blog post!"...but none of them seemed like the right FIRST blog post.  Problem is, that let to a thousand and two things that I wanted to blog about NOT getting blogged about, so here I am, sucking it up and making that first post.

My name is Stephanie; I'm a 27 year old Michigander, half-Canadian, (bottle) red-head, amateur hop farmer, craft beer enthusiast, gym rat, aspiring fitness instructor (currently certified to teach Bokwa), 5k runner (even though I hate running), avid reader, lover of cooking (even though I'm not ashamed to admit I eat popcorn for dinner a whole lot more than I should), & hockey obsessed (we ARE Hockeytown here in Detroit, MI).  I spend too much money on decorating my condo & clothes I never get a chance to wear between work and the gym.  Sometimes I have a hard time motivating myself to do anything but lounge on the couch with my cats (I have two - Chopper, a 4 year old too smart for his own good tabby, and Trix, a 2 year old all black bundle of stupid) and watch crappy TV.  I work in plastics engineering as a materials manager/release analyst for Chrysler/Ford/GM production & service parts. I couldn't care less about cars - I went to college (Western Michigan University alum, what what!) for creative writing & Japanese language.  Go figure.  I love fall more than anything in the world; Halloween is my favorite holiday.  I could eat peanut butter by the spoonful and polish off an entire bag of trail mix without even realizing it (there's no polite way to say this, but I friggin LOVE nuts).  I like to do nerdy hipster DIY stuff like making my own pickles and jams and granola.  I'm just getting my yoga feet wet - but I'm definitely the definition of a bad yogi.  Everything I read makes me want to do CrossFit but I'm not ready to give up my global gym membership just yet (I love too much about it - and I've grown so close to so many of my instructors that I'd feel like I was leaving my family!).  How do people afford both??

I love Michigan - the lakes, the colors, the climate, and especially the beer and brewing culture.  My dream is to open a brewery (more on this later!) and live out my days happily growing hops, making beer, and seeing happy people enjoying it.  In the meantime, while I slave away making sure people can get replacement parts when they inevitably smash up their vehicles, I'm slowly but surely plodding away at my quest, which was the original purpose of this blog, before I realized I have a LOT more I want to talk about than just this journey, to visit & sample (at least one!) beer at every Michigan Brewery.  Currently at 82 and counting!  (More on this later, as well.)

So, there it is - beer, fitness, good eats, and a whole lot of crap I can't imagine anyone being that interested in.  But it feels damn good to flex my blogging fingers again.